“The best we can hope for is a slowdown in price growth, not so much a decline,” says Kayla Bruun, economic analyst at Morning Consult. She joined LX News to explain how inflation affects you.
A government office is urging millions of eligible Americans to claim COVID stimulus funds that they were eligible for, with the deadline to do so rapidly approaching.
In a press release, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that an estimated 9-to-10 million individuals have not yet received their COVID relief payments.
The estimates are based on data provided by the IRS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, according to officials.
Officials say that the IRS and Treasury struggled to get the payments into the hands of specific groups of individuals, including those experiencing homelessness, those with limited internet access and those in lower-income brackets, according to the press release.
The funds that Americans may still be eligible for include direct COVID-relief payments, which were authorized by the federal government between April 2020 and Dec. 2021, according to the release. A total of three rounds of payments were approved by Congress, and individuals making below $75,000 or married couples making below $150,000 were eligible for all three payments.
Some Americans may also have failed to claim the temporarily-expanded Child Tax Credit, according to officials. That tax credit was raised to $3,000 for children between the ages of 6-to-17, and to $3,600 for those 5 years of age and younger, according to officials.
If individuals have not yet received those payments and believe that they are eligible to do so, there is only one way to obtain the money: to file a tax return. Individuals can do so by using the Child Tax credit website, but the deadline to do so is approaching quickly, according to officials.
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In fact, individuals who missed this year’s filing deadline for income tax returns only have until Oct. 17, to file.
For those individuals who were not required to pay income taxes, a return must be filed by Nov. 15 in order to determine whether or not they are eligible to receive funds from the government, according to the GAO.
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Individuals who fit at least one of these criteria may not have received payments:
-Have not filed tax returns
-Did not have bank accounts
-Families with mixed immigration status
-Families with limited or no internet access
-Individuals who have experienced homelessness
